Cataclysm Beta, Blue posts

Cataclysm Beta, Patch 3.3.5, and Garfield
Comments in news posts went slightly out of control lately so I think it's time to clarify a few things!

Cataclysm Beta
At this point I'm pretty sure I will end up being wrong about the Cataclysm Beta Starting in April. I could either hide the news post and ban anyone mentioning it on the forums for the next 2 years or laugh at it, I decided to laugh.

Now just to make it clear, when I posted this information it was pretty clear that the Alpha test would start in April but apparently a couple of things went terribly wrong and it was postponed a couple of times. The information itself wasn't bad, I just learned the hard way that you do not try to predict the beginning of a Blizzard's Alpha in public.

Patch 3.3.5
Yesterday's post made a lot of people wonder if the beta was starting or not, at this point it's not really clear if the PTR copies were tested for the beta or for 3.3.5 but considering that Blizzard employees didn't hear about F&F/Beta keys I suggest that you assume it is Patch 3.3.5 until proved otherwise.

Conclusion
The PTR/Beta release dates aren't set in stone and it's very hard to get any reliable information about that for the moment. Also, I do realize that people will take that opportunity to jump at my throat screaming "YOU WERE WRONNNNNG!" but I also hope that a few people out there know how things work and understand that patches/alpha predictions are a tricky thing, I'm still 100% confident about everything I post/posted/will post on the front page and if I think something is relevant and safe enough to be there, it will be pretty hard to make me change my mind.

For those of you who really want to try to kill me in public, here is a very cute picture of Garfield to cheer you up before you hit the reply button!

Inappropriate Character and Team Names

Originally Posted by Zarhym
(Blue Tracker)

To ensure all participants in the Arena Tournament have the best experience possible, there will be a zero-tolerance policy for any inappropriate character or Arena team names created on the Arena Tournament realm.

Characters with inappropriate names will be deleted. This means that you will need to customize another template from scratch and re-earn all personal and hidden ratings. Keep in mind that in a later phase of the Arena Tournament team rosters will be locked down. If your character is deleted during this time, no exceptions will be made and your team will need to use whoever is left on that roster in order to continue competing.

Arena teams with names deemed inappropriate will be dissolved. This means that you will need to create another charter for your team and climb back up from a rating of zero.

Please think twice before naming your characters and Arena teams!

Blue posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Buff Homogenization
We really don't want the buffs and debuffs you bring to be the reason you get a spot in the raid. We hate the thought of kicking a good player for a bad player because the latter provides so much of a dps increase to everyone else. We hate the thought of not being able to raid with your friends because playing raid buff Tetris is more important to your success.

Raid buffs and debuffs exist for two main reasons:

1) They encourage you to bring a diversity of classes and specs rather than stacking whatever is highest dps at the moment.
2) They make you feel more powerful in a group than when you're solo. For an MMO, WoW is pretty soloable, so we like for it to feel really awesome when you're in a group.

Whenever we read "Without my buff, there is no reason for a group to take me," our typical response is: awesome. You'll have to figure out another reason why they should take you. Whenever we read that a particular buff is the driving decisions behind why you took one player over another, then we know we still have some work to do.

There will be more buff / debuff consolidation in Cataclysm. I look forward to the day when the raid buff everyone brings dominates less of the forum discussion. (Source)

Personal Rating removal on PvP Weapons in Cataclysm
This is the kind of thing that we're likely to iterate on a lot before Cataclysm and the new PvP season go live, but it will probably be something like those PvP weapons the same ilevel as raid weapons will require no rating but a lot of Conquest points, while those PvP weapons the same ilevel as the HEROIC raid weapons will require a rating of some kind.

We want everyone who is interested in PvP to have a reasonable shot of getting decent gear so they can actually compete. We also want to still offer rewards to those players who are the best of the best at PvP. We don't want everyone just dying their way to the most powerful weapons in the game.

When we've settled on and are ready to talk about ilevels, then it will be easier to have a discussion about actual numbers and not just goals. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)Spamming Wild Growth
I addressed this with my first post in this thread (I think). We could just make the mana cost so high that it's prohibitive to spam. What could very well happen though is healers spam it anyway, run out of mana, and then say there's no way for them to heal without using the spell and that the mana cost is just too high. You can argue that's still the right answer anyway. I concede that that might be the way we go.

In the case of say Flash Heal vs. Heal, there's a pretty clear alternative. There isn't a clear alternative to Wild Growth other than just tab targeting Rejuv on several different people. Nor are we crazy about giving druids yet another heal to be the fast, inefficient AE so WG can be the efficient AE. We think it's better just to design an environment in which you don't need to AE heal as often and get a chance to use your other heals in the meantime.

To those players who say they don't want to cast a lot of different spells, I'm a little perplexed as to what you thought you were getting into with the Resto druid. Surely you thought there would come a day when we'd try to make those other spells attractive again or else cut them. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator)Hunter rotations
Yeah, I would describe the Feral "rotation" as more of a prioritization. Instead of the player just hitting 123123, they have to make the best decision for their resources at that moment. Feral druids are rarely "starved for resources" unless it's an unusual fight like Vezax. There is almost always a button they can push and the decision is whether to push a cheaper button now or wait a sec or two to push a stronger button.

That's more of how we see the hunter playing. If hunters don't use about the same number of shot that they do now, then we've failed. What will feel different is that you won't hit long stretches of being out of mana.

It's definitely possible that the long term cooldown abilities won't cost any focus. You shouldn't have to bank part of your bar for emergencies.

My apologies if you just really liked mana as a mechanic. For us, and for plenty of hunters -- because they told us constantly -- mana just never fit the hunter class. You're firing arrows, not winding up big spells. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)Warrior AE Tanking
For me it comes down to whether warriors can AE tank or not. The impression I'm getting from a lot of these posts (though not yours) is a lot of warriors can AE tank okay but just want it to be easier. "Easier" is something you have to be very careful about. If you're making it easier because it's currently frustrating then it might be a good change. If you're making it easier because it's currently challenging, then it might be a bad change. Those aren't easy conditions to untangle though, because for some players any failure to win (or sometimes even a failure to be efficient) is frustrating.

Regardless, as I said before, given that we don't expect tanks to be doing a lot of AE tanking, we're not sure they need a ton of abilities solely devoted to AE tanking. If warriors truly can't AE tank, then we'd rather make the tools they have work rather than trying to add Whirlwind as yet another button on your tanking bar.

Given that warriors generally seem to be able to AE tank fine today (and in fact could AE tank fine back in BC when the tools were even less AE-friendly) and given that there will be fewer opportunities to AE tank in the future, any problems in the future will be by definition even smaller in magnitude. Given that, I think the amount of time we've spent on this topic is quite disproportionate to its importance. (Source)

Re: Cataclysm Beta, Blue posts

Re: Cataclysm Beta, Blue posts

HE STOLE THIS GARFIELD FROM ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh no wait. It is still here IN MY ROOM...
I stole it from Boubouille in the first place... Now he is using old pictures...
[me=Marzenia]hugs her Garfield. [/me]

Re: Cataclysm Beta, Blue posts

New guy here, but always read your site. As far as I can tell, the info you bring us is really based off concrete sources. Stuff happens. Keep up the info so that I can stay informed without wading through the WoW forums.